For more information, please contact

City’s Website Named Best of Indiana for Increased Access to News, Information and Services

Bloomington, Ind. - The City of Bloomington has won the 2018 Best of Indiana Award for Best Application Serving the Public (Local Government) for its 2017 website redesign. At the Indiana Digital Government Summit September 27, The City of Bloomington’s website was commended for a redesign that “simplifies navigation to key City services, information and news.”

The City’s award-winning website was singled out for its responsive design, which ensures that the site is easily accessible on different devices with a range of screen sizes. The award also acknowledged the degree to which the site shares features and design patterns with strong municipal sites around the country and the world. Additionally, the site’s content management system was lauded for its direct integrations with other information systems. Such features as the financial transparency portal, business quick-start guide and interactive map gallery were also cited during the presentation of the award.

“Maintaining a site that provides maximal transparency and simple navigability to public information and City services is essential to our residents,” said Mayor John Hamilton. “I congratulate all of our staff in ITS and everyone else who helped get our new website off the ground.”

A collaboration between Indiana's Office of Technology and Government Technology magazine, the Best of Indiana Awards recognize state and local government organizations for their standout contributions, best practices and innovations in information technology that improve citizen services.

The City's Department of Information & Technology Services redesigned the City’s website with the goal of making it simpler for residents and other users to access the City’s services, information and news. The open source Drupal content management system serves as the website’s foundation, which has been directly integrated with various other systems, including Staff Directory (Active Directory), onBoard (Board/Commission information system), Google Calendar, Parks & Recreation PROMPT and Animal Shelter Manager systems.

The new website service improves the customer experience for both internal and external users, by providing a responsive website platform with most services functional on a mobile device, tablet or desktop computer. Since the launch of the new website, exit rates are down 11%, and bounce rate is down 93%. Over half the website’s users interact with it on a mobile device.

“On behalf of the City of Bloomington ITS team we are honored to be recognized for our work,” said ITS Director Rick Dietz upon accepting the award. “I especially want to thank the Bloomington public for their feedback during the alpha stage of website development, city department staff for deftly curating website content, and the entire ITS website team (past and present) for continually applying their creativity and skills to improve our website and digital services. Citizens increasingly expect to interact with government digitally. We’re proud to be recognized for doing that well.”

###

Caption for attached image: City of Bloomington ITS Director Rick Dietz accepts 2018 Best of Indiana Award for Best Application Serving the Public (Local Government) at the Indiana Digital Government Summit September 27.